Roger Jaensch,Minister for Housing
The Hodgman Liberal Government is taking a range of actions to address housing supply issues in Hobart and around the state.
We know that there is no one silver bullet to address growing demand. That’s why we convened the Housing Summit, which brought together a range of experts and stakeholders to find medium and long term solutions to address this challenge.
Since then, the Hodgman Liberal Government has been working hard to improve access to affordable housing. We have extended the $20,000 First ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ Builder Boost; provided stamp duty relief for pensioners downsizing, removed red tape to make it easier and quicker to build homes, and rezoned surplus government owned land to enable more homes to be built, faster.
Measures like this have seen Tasmania continue to lead the nation in the annual growth in residential building approvals. Tasmania was the only jurisdiction to experience growth in the total number of building approvals in January 2019, compared to January 2018, which grew a nation-leading 19.7 per cent, in trend terms.
This is all in addition to our Affordable Housing Strategy, a comprehensive ten year Plan to boost the supply of social and affordable homes. Action Plan One is on track to assist over 1,600 low income households by the end of June 2019, including new supply of 941 affordable lots and homes.
It is pleasing to see the Housing Register has stabilised, below where it was a year ago, which means we are keeping up with new demand for social housing. We know there is more work to do and we will soon be releasing our second stage plan, which together with stage one, will provide a total of 2400 new affordable homes, and assist around 3600 households.
We know we cannot do this all on our own and we expect all key stakeholders to play their part to make sure new housing and accommodation projects are delivered across the entire housing spectrum.
A progress report on the Housing Summit actions is available here:
